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Monday, September 2, 2013

"The League" by Bill Mills (2013)

Given enough time; and the opportunity; history will always
repeat itself. It may not happen in your lifetime, but through the ages it
always has, and we humans seem to learn nothing from it. That may be the most
important message in this book, if the author intended there to be one. As
Harry Truman used to say, “The only thing new is the history you don’t know.”

As the United States went to war in 1917, a civilian “army”
of volunteers; numbering about a quarter of a million people, at a time when
our population was just about 100 million in total; went to work spying on one
another under the guise of “protecting the home front”. The unintended
consequences of this well intentioned action played out across the nation as
the American Protective League infiltrated Unions, busted up strikes, and
generally intimidated anyone with an opinion against the war in Europe. This
should be starting to sound familiar right about now, as we struggle with our
own sense of what is right and wrong with the “War on Terror”, and the recently
disclosed actions of the NSA.

Between 1917 and 1918 this group was like a miniature NSA,
listening to everything said by their co-workers and friends. They even had
their own newspaper/magazine called “The Spy Glass”, which gave tips on turning
in your neighbors. Even preachers were not immune to this feeling of power, and
in at least one case, a clergyman sent in a report about a fellow clergyman
with whom he did not agree.

That the APL became somewhat of a place for people
to go in order to “get even”, or a place to settle personal scores should not
be surprising at all. It’s human nature. Erich Maria Remarque wrote, in "All
Quiet on the Western Front", that “even a dog trained to eat potatoes will snap
at meat given the opportunity. Men behave the same way when given the
opportunity to have a little authority. Every man is a beast underneath all his
manners and customs.”

This book is both timely and informative. It is timely in
respect to our current situation in the War on Terror, in which our own
government is spying upon us; and informative in the sense that very few
Americans alive today really have any idea that what we are experiencing now in
relation to “national security”, has all been done before. The lesson of this
book is simple; it was a bad idea then, and remains so today.